[rhizome]

Why don't the currently available collaboration tools enable start-ups and the communities around them to be independent of location?

It's pretty much a monthly topic here: because companies (to paraphrase) don't like to use remote workers. The history of subculture also tells us that communities spring from groups of players: before punk rock music emerged, punk rockers were (paraphrasing again) just a bunch of underemployed and blue collar kids who fit into neither the mod nor rocker scenes.

If the desire for a decentralized and geographically dispersed startup scene gathers enough momentum, the participants will create the companies and communities that support that way of working, as well as finding the funders who will contribute working capital to these kinds of operations.